Wal-Mart HD DVD: To Be or Not To Be

That is the question. Wal-Mart is officially saying they didn't pick sides, but their spokesman did also say they expected consumers to pick a winner in the coming months. Currently they sell the $350 Toshiba HD-D1 HD DVD and the $900 Philips BDP900/37 Blu-Ray player.

But this was a leak and it never was Wal-Mart's intent to announce to their competitors that they expected to do to the DVD market what they had done to the TV market over the last several quarters. They want to own this market much like they currently own 40% of the regular DVD space.

The Chinese government is mandating a switch to evd in the home video market for that country. Not Bluray, and not HDDVD.

On a Walmart related note, Funai, the supplier of Walmart's televisions and DVD players that sell at the most reduced pricepoints, has already announced BluRay support by the end of the year. http://www.engadget.com/200...

====> so with a Ps3 you get next-gen game console for $350 ($600 - $250) + a cheap Blu-ray player for $250. All in a single unit.

You're kidding yourself if you think HD DVD will beat Blu-ray. Size does matter with HD Games or TV - the more data you can store the better. HD DVD will lose the format war unless consumers are absolute idiots. Do you want 50 G storage or 30 G? A no brainer here folks.

If you are backing HD DVD then you're wasting your money.

So STFU about the price of Ps3. This is a bargain. And will be more so when the price drops - which it always does.

So no more articles on cheap HD DVD sales at WalMart, K-Mart or any other Mart. If you do the maths, it always comes to the same solution/conclusion. Blu-ray will be the HD format especially once ps3 sales take off in 2008 with the release of Little Big Planet... http://youtube.com/watch?v=...

HD Movies don't need that much space, so Blu-Ray is not needed. Next Gen gaming is here and there is plenty of room on a DVD for the best possible graphics, so another reason why Blu-Ray is not needed. Plus everything about BR cost more giving HD-DVD the win. Sorry!!!

If someone ONLY/MOSTLY cares about playing games they don't want to pay $600 for a GAME system.

If someone ONLY/MOSTLY cares about watching high definition movies they would gladly rather pay < $400 for a player.

The ONLY case where the PS3 would be a good deal is in the case where you equally like to play games AND watch high definition movies which globally would be considered a minority group. The greatest numbers fall into the pure game player or pure movie fan categories. Then again there is also another smaller group that prefers to keep their experiences separate and buy dedicated machines for both.

Another day, and another Bob Enderle "HD-DVD has won/ will win/ might win / will probably win / would be better to win cause i say so" blog entry masked as "news" after he made an idiot out of himself with his last "analysis" on why HD-DVD has won - now /- maybe not now but surely tomorrow/- 100% at some time in the future. Heavy backpedaling + entrenching going on at his page in the style of "ok, i said is was a fact, now it was proven wrong and i need to come up with a way to still say it is a fact to avoid looking stupid"

Come back next week when some likewise pointless blogger posts his ravings on why BluRay "won / will win / might win / won cause i said so" on this channel ....

Starting to get repetitive, i hope it will stop till Xmas so we can get a more complete picture on the market shares by then. But if BluRay keeps on selling at a rate of 4:1 compared with HD-DVD it will only get harder for Toshiba to stay in the market. On the other hand it would be nice if we only had one format by then, to avoid any further confusion.

Are you crazy Blu-ray only has a 200 thousand lead in software sales the stand alone HD-DVD players out sell Blu-ray players. HD-DVD is hardly dead we'll have to wait and see if which format the masses choose thus which format base the studios will support in the long run. I mean come on! the PS3 is pulling Blu-rays weight and BR is still barely able to pull away with all the studios backing BR.

PS3 sales say no one cares about whatever you're ranting about, the console has to have a bright future even the most casual consumer can see most do not talk to Super Sony fanboys to form opinions about PS3.

Are you all better know?, who are you telling to STFU has anybody mentioned half the things that you're talking about?. lol

Wal-Mart going hard core after that HD-DVD cash. This isn't about the PS3 it will survive no matter what format wins. This is about economics and economy of scales. And Wal-Marts business model is based on buy low sell low. Blu-Ray is just too expensive to be profitable on the margins Wal-Mart makes their money on.

I'm sick of how sensitive discs are. Scratches, dirt, fingerprints, disc-rot can all impact viewing quality. Another annoying thing is that if your discs get stolen or damaged that most insurance companies will pay out a maximum amount which is usually well below replacement value.

There are so many annoying things about current disc formats that I can't wait until we move to complete digital distribution (DiDi) of movies. DiDi may not be perfect but lets face it, there is a growing number of consumers buying discs and cutting the contents to HDD to stream wirelessly to multiple display devices around the home. DiDi makes that entire process much easier. Discs are really just a delivery mechanism for getting the content home to put it to real use.

DiDi may not be a complete reality for all now, but in 5 years it will probably be mainstream. No matter which disc format wins it has, in my opinion, already lost...if only they had agreed on a common format 3 years ago instead of putting the consumer in the middle of another pointless standards war.

Its not Wal-Marts job to decide which format ( HD-DVD, Blu-Ray players ) should be at the top. Their main focus is on selling products ( that are on demand w/ the times ) and are valued by their customers. It's only practical for them to make deals with a lot of companies that they think could make them ( some, a lot of ) profit over what these manufacturers try to offer them. It's us the consumers' who will decide whatever product we think suits our budgets and lifestyles... Don't you people ever think? This is just pure ignorant, brain deficient fanboyism again, arguing about whether XBox 360 - HD or PS3 - Blu-Ray should be on top of the charts...

1) The Chinese speak of HD-DVD as a category, not a format. So - in the category it could be either HD-DVD or BluRay 2) The Blu Ray lasers came down from $150 to $8 - so the price advantage is a bit moot now as the high cost items are dropping due to economies of scale. 3) BluRay came from behind, overtook HD-DVD and is outselling HD-DVD at a ratio of 3:1 or 4:1 or even 7:1 depending on whose stats you believe. No one puts HD-DVD in the lead the moment (well, except for maybe TheMART) 4) Every PS3 sold is a BluRay player sold. This standalone player waffle is really really stupid. It is not 300k to 250k, it is 300k vs 3M if HD-DVD camp is lucky. 5) Rob Enderle - he will back whatever MS is saying. If you followed tech for at least 15 years, you will know that. OK, so some of the kiddies here is not even that old... MS said that HD-DVD is superior and will win, so Rob says it too. 6) If the new el-cheapo drive will be HD-DVD reading 50 (actually 51GB) disks, then HD-DVD NG sales is at 0. And the current sales is dead in the water. Because the old ones can not read 51GB disks, and the new ones will. So either the content stays at 15GB, or the current install base is scrapped. Nice one eh? 7) Oopsy.. If the HD-DVD drives will be going 51GB, then the spec transfer speed is going to be a bit low, which will mean all kinds of issues with playback.

So... HD-DVD died. Horribly. Could have won if the XB360 came out standard with it, but that would mean the XB360 would have to launch with the PS3, so they dropped the HD-DVD. Sony delayed, and stuck with the BR. Now it could mean that XB360 might have the edge due to the installed base, but HD-DVD is going to die because of it. Such is life. PS3 will survive because BR will win and it just might make the PS3 overtake the PS3 sales in a couple of years time. But for now, the PS3 killed the HD-DVD drive because its biggest potential partner left it behind.

...Blu-Ray will win. However, point 4 could easily be disputed as Sony once claimed that every PSP sold is a UMD player. Look what happened to UMD. Obviously Blu-Ray is a different story.

I also agree that Microsoft dropped the ball by not having an HD-DVD drive in the 360 but not for supporting HD movie playback. Simply because the larger storage capacity would have been beneficial to game developers. In the end however, Microsoft opted for a bigger slice of the gaming pie over pushing a format for delivering movie content. Sony has much more riding on the success of Blu-Ray than Microsoft ever did/will with HD-DVD.

As with my comment earlier, I don't support either format as I have no use or time for another disc format. I do however feel sorry for those consumers who have bought into HD-DVD purely for watching movie content.

As a final comment, the true winner of this format war will be known when some of the big franchises are released, e.g. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc. However, given that the install base for either format is still dwarfed by DVD then this could be some time away.

Actually, one last comment concerning revisions of the current formats (related to point 6). I also think that the HDMI standard is a balls up from a consumer standpoint. We are already into version 1.3 of HDMI which some older devices (and current ones) don't support. Who knows, in 2 years time will the PS3 and the current crop of HD players and display devices support a future HDMI standard?

This is about a retailer trying to decide which format will sell them more discs. Newsflash: retailers make their money on repeat business, not the initial hardware sale! If I use your numbers, since inception: 300k vs. 3m available players and Blu-ray can only muster a little over 200k more in overall sales?

To say it again: HD-DVD buyers purchase more movies per player than Blu-ray buyers.

13.1 UMD and BluRay is not the same case. UMD is horrible for movies. I agree with you on the XB360 that MS dropped the ball - they really needed to have bigger capacity. They should have started with a 60GB drive minimum. The 20GB was laughable, and the core model with no disk - well - that was just plain stupid. BTW, I think Sony having a 20GB model was stupid as well. My point on the XB360 with HD-DVD - if you would support it for movie playback or not - 20% at least would. That would be what nearly 2M players in the field by now? That would have handed HD-DVD the victory before the PS3 got out the door.

13.2 Try to say it - BluRay titles outsells HD-DVD by 3:1, 4:1, 7:1 depending on who you talk to. And if you guys try to argue that PS3's are not used for BluRay video playback - then - that would mean the standalone BluRay players are buying more per machine than HD-DVD. Your fanboyism is blinding your vision. Any way you argue, whatever stats you try to twist, BluRay is clobbering HD-DVD to the point that HD-DVD fanboys organize buying weekends to lift the stats for two days to make themselves feel better. It is over. They had their chance in the market, but conditions conspired against them, and they lost. What would have happened if the PS3 and XB360 lunched the same time and the XB360 had a HD-DVD we can only speculate about. Point is, it did not, and that sank HD-DVD. Simple as that. They will be back the next format war. That is how the industries work. Within a year or two Toshiba will make BluRay players and MS will have a BluRay add on for the XB360, and when the next round starts only the "old" gamers then will remember that something like HD-DVD existed. Sort of like some of us remember the days that you went to the video shop and had to check if the title was on Beta or VHS depending on what machine you owned. Nowadays my youngest kids have not even heard of Betamax, and the VHS machine is only used for old titles we have.